Southwestern Road to Reorganize Bike Route-Map

Ralph Stevens
Schollsdale--The Portland, Oregon bike route system, "The Southwestern Road," and its parent, Greenway Holdings Co., have decided to take another look at the trailroad's operations, seeking to streamline the route-map as much as possible.

While the Southwestern Road remained vibrant and overall successful, with bike routes stretching throughout the Portland Metro Area, including an interurban mainline connecting Hillsboro in the west, to Gresham, a run of almost 20 miles, management in both Greenway's Ashland, Oregon offices, and local executives were questioning the necessity of such a massive system. The Interurban mainline, while impressive on a map, was rarely used and under-explored, and so expansion en-route was difficult at best. The Portland-Gresham main via the busy Springwater Corridor bike path received less than one run a year from Southwestern Road traffic, and the route, unlike local Beaverton routes which saw rapid expansion to parks and neighborhoods as they were discovered, saw little traffic, and no expansion.

"It all seemed excessive," Steven Kramer said, when asked to comment on the status of the company, "All of the routes look impressive on a map, but if you take the traffic into consideration, the active trailroad was about half the size it appeared to be on paper."

The trailroad had previously been considering several mergers that would have expanded the system further in these little-explored areas, but walked away from all of these upon a second examination, and instead turned to a reorganization plan. Greenway holdings executives, as well as officers from the trailroad  met at the Izaak Walton Inn, in Essex MT to discuss how the trailroad should best be laid out.

In the end, following a plan known as the Essex Decision, the Southwestern spun off all routes west of Beaverton into a new company called the "maillink System" after the Kramer Paper subsidiary that originally operated them. The fabled Springwater Corridor Route was removed from the route map as well, seeking instead to further its understanding of the area it serves, and developing new routes in areas that are likely to receive more traffic. An early draft of the Essex Decision called for the system to be entirely localized in the Beaverton area, but the final document retains the temporarily-embargoed line into Downtown Portland.

"If this were an actual railroad, then redundant trackage might be a concern," said a Southwestern Road executive, "But since these are bike routes, we could have one on every street if we wanted. The point of the new route map is to maintain routes that are both enjoyed and utilized. The routes we will retain are routes that either fit this category, or that soon will. And those that are not retained may still be ridden-- just not under the Southwestern Road banner."

The  "Maillink System" will hold less used routes, as well as routes operated by Mark Kramer during the summer months. Runnign rights were traded between the Southwestern and Maillink, granting southwestern Road access to the Beaverton Farmers Market and Garden Home, and Maillink bicycles access to Southwestern's Church Creek Line and to Hyand Woods as well as certain local traffic.

Following the re-organization, the Southwestern Road has been re-named the Willamette, Fanno Creek, & Bull Mountain Trailroad.

Ralph Stevens is the Kramer Paper's business editor.